School Drug Investigation

School Searches Must Be Based on Fourth Amendment Reasonableness The rights of children under the Fourth Amendment have been deemed more limited than those of adults. The school typically searches children’s things on school property for one of two reasons; either the child has recreational drugs or one of they are participating in a school athletic position (Ingram, 2009). Typically, before one can search the personal property of a public school student, the standards for reasonable suspicion must be met. However, when it comes to drug testing an athlete, there is usually no suspicion prior to the test. Therefore, if a school desires to drug test it athletes, they do not need reasonable suspicion of drug use. They simply can do so as a requirement to join a sports team. My school did not drug test athletes, but I know of several schools that did. To me such testing is a good thing and reasonable because it keeps kids safe. A lot of kids do not …show more content…
Therefore, it was not surprising that once the Oregon, Vernonia School District determined that all student athletes must submit to a drug test at the beginning of the sports season before they could participate, some parents became angry. One family filed a lawsuit claiming that the requirement of a drug test was a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. This case was between Vernonia School District v. Acton. The court began this case by determining if this was in fact defined as a search under the Fourth Amendment and they concluded that it was. The court then had to determine if the student’s privacy rights were being violated by the drug screenings. After some deliberation, the court ruled that because the school had many issues with drug use by students and that there was a safety concern of students playing sports under the influence of drugs, that such drug testing was